Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants Gov. Andrew Cuomo to scrap plans to flood the transit system with 500 additional cops — and instead redirect that money to better subway and bus service.
In a letter to Cuomo on Tuesday, AOC and colleagues said the Cuomo-backed fare evasion crackdown unfairly targets black and Latino fare-beaters and punishes people for living in poverty.
“Arresting hard-working people who cannot afford a $2.75 fare is, in effect, the criminalization of poverty,” she wrote in the letter co-signed by fellow Bronx Congressman Jose Serrano and state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Queens).
“Desperately needed resources would be better invested in subway, bus, maintenance, and service improvements, as well as protecting riders and transit workers from assault rather than in the over-policing of our communities,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Cuomo announced the influx of officers in June in order to combat fare evasion and stem the tide of assaults against transit workers and riders. He has since blamed public outrage over high-profile caught-on-tape subway arrests on “the relationship between the police and the community.”
The letter is Ocasio-Cortez’s most direct challenge to a Cuomo-backed policy since the fight over the aborted Amazon headquarters in Long Island City earlier this year. Her opposition to the Amazon deal — negotiated and championed by the governor — helped pressure the e-tail giant to cancel the project.
The MTA board will vote to approve the cop expansion — along with the rest of its $19 billion operating budget — on Wednesday. Hiring for the new positions began in September.
MTA officials claim the 60 percent expansion of the agency’s in-house police force will cost $249 million over the next four years, but budget watchdogs peg the 10-year cost at nearly $1 billion.
Ocasio-Cortez’s position aligns her with transit advocates who claim the funding could be better spent on a 15 percent increase in non-peak subway service.
At Monday’s MTA board committee meetings, two of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s three reps — Bob Linn and David Jones — cited the decision to hire more police officers as a reason for their votes against the budget.
“We don’t have, or at least the board has not been apprised, of a strategy for deployment of these [officers],” said the mayor’s other appointee, Veronica Vanterpool, who told Politico she also intended to vote against the plan.
In her letter, AOC acknowledged there’s been an increase in assaults on bus and subway workers and called for a more targeted police approach that focuses on these crimes “without criminalizing poverty.”
“Instead of patrolling the turnstile, existing police officers should focus on the threats faced by MTA employees,” she said, adding that doing so would also save the MTA money by curbing costs to cover for injured workers.
In response, the MTA provided a list of all over 40 incidents covered in the media since Nov. 1 that “required police attention.”
“We will not engage in politics when it comes to public safety: New Yorkers deserve to have reliable service and feel secure on our system – these priorities are one and the same. Cuomo’s handpicked MTA chair Pat Foye fired back.
Adding additional uniformed police officers across the MTA will help ensure safety and quality of life for our eight million daily customers.”
Cuomo’s office reffered The Post to the MTA, which the governor effectively controls, for comment.
“We will not engage in politics when it comes to public safety: New Yorkers deserve to have reliable service and feel secure on our system – these priorities are one and the same,” Cuomo’s handpicked MTA chair Pat Foye said in a statement.
“Adding additional uniformed police officers across the MTA will help ensure safety and quality of life for our eight million daily customers.”
Serrano and US Rep. Jerrold Nadler and state Sens. Gianaris, Luis Sepulveda, Jessica Ramos, Julia Salazar and Alessandra Biaggi also signed the letter.
